"True Love" in comics

I don't believe in True Love. Not the kind people mean when they say it in that way, the way where you can hear the capital letters. Not the soulmate kind of thing, the one-and-only kind of thing, the never-love-this-way-again kind of thing, the just-one-chance-at-happiness-ever kind of thing.

I do believe in true love. Lower-case true love. Real life true love.

I'm a married woman. A happily married woman I love my husband to a ridiculous degree, and with every year things get better and better. I can't imagine being with anyone else.

But I don't believe that he's the only man I could have been happy with (although surely it would have been a different kind of happy in a different kind of relationship).

"Okay, Brainfreeze, good for you, we're happy for you, but what does this have to do with comics?" I hear you say.

Comics like to go for the True Love.

Not always, but often. And often at the expense of good stories. Why, for example, is Black Canary supposedly going back to Green Arrow? (Nothing against Green Arrow, but she's been a far better character since they've been apart. And has had much better boyfriends besides.) It's got to be because that's who she's been historically paired with, regardless of whether the pairing makes sense or is even interesting at this point.

Comics also like to go for the First Love, as in equating the First Love with the True Love.

Even retroactively, as in the case of Robin/Nightwing and Batgirl and Starfire. It irks me no end the way the relationship between Dick and Kory--one of the sweeter and more unique hero relationships--has been downgraded in order to make room for Barbara Gordon as First Love/True Love.

Peter Parker will never love Mary Jane the way he loved Gwen Stacey, because Gwen was the First Love and therefore the True Love.

(I'm not going entirely from House of M here. Actually I'm not sure that the point there was the one many people seemed to see--that because in his ideal world he was with Gwen, he had to have loved her more. More likely, I think, that he simply wouldn't have had the chance to be with MJ because he never had to part from Gwen, no statement on the comparative quality of his feeling for the two women.)

Because, you know, it's not possible that Peter could be just as happy with MJ, albeit in different ways, as he could have been if things had gone differently with Gwen. The difference can't be qualitative--it has to be quantitative as well. One has to be better.

Why is that? Are there actually people who think that way in real life? Who don't take each relationship on its own merits without thinking about how it rates in comparison to other relationships? Because, you know, that would suck, to exist that way.

Ahem.